1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for providing an access to contents on a network using a code.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are a variety of contents on the Internet. To access the contents, it is generally necessary to specify a character string that conforms to a specific format called a uniform resource locator (URL) to a terminal.
The URL is formed with about 10 to 30 characters, and in some cases, it is not easy to specify the URL accurately. In order to ease the difficulty, services are provided to enable access to contents on the Internet by specifying a short code. The specified code is transmitted to a conversion server, and then the conversion server converts the code to an official URL.
The mechanism is further applied to realize a service in conjunction with a technology to embed a code in image data. Such a service is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-349879. With the method of embedding a code in image data for accessing contents related to the image data, a user can easily select and access desired contents, relying on the image.
However, when a plurality of providers offers the service to access contents using a code, the user may be confused. For example, if each of a plurality of the providers offers a proprietary mechanism to allow access to contents with the code obtained from an image data, the user will have to be aware of which images correspond to which provider's service, or else the user will be unable to access the contents.